Tag: Open Thread

Jul 25 2015

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Squashes of Summer

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Pan-Cooked Summer Squash With Tomatoes and Basil

This Provençal summer dish is delightful as a starter or as a side dish with fish, chicken or cooked grains.

Spicy Grilled Zucchini

This mildly spicy dish from southern Italy can serve as an appetizer or side. Cut the zucchini on the diagonal into long, thin slices, or cut it lengthwise.

Cumin-Scented Summer Squash Salad

The summer squash is lightly steamed in this North African salad.

Marinated Zucchini Salad

Raw zucchini can be a dull ingredient, but when it’s very thinly sliced it marinates beautifully, especially in lemon juice.

Shells With Summer Squash, Corn, Beans and Tomato

You can use canned beans for this dish, but if you happen to have cooked pintos or borlottis in broth, use the broth for the pasta sauce.

Jul 24 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: The Anti-Immigrant Binge in Congress

Congress is in danger of taking that most cursed of American political disagreements, the debate over illegal immigration, and dragging it farther toward insanity.

Bills are being rushed to the floor in the House and Senate in response to a woman’s senseless killing in San Francisco by an unauthorized immigrant with a long criminal record. That single crime has energized hard-line Republican lawmakers who have long peddled the false argument that all illegal immigrants are a criminal menace, and that the best way to erase their threat is by new layers of inflexible policing. [..]

Congress should support the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to focus its limited resources on dangerous criminals and national security threats. It should allow the vast majority of immigrants, who pose no threat, to pass background checks, pay fines and back taxes and live and work in this country openly.

That would be a serious solution, one that gives deserving immigrants a foothold in this country and makes it easier to uncover those who come here to do harm. It is called comprehensive reform, which Mr. Smith, Mr. Gowdy and others in their anti-immigrant caucus, now consumed with exploitive fury over the San Francisco tragedy, have fought at every turn.

Paul Krugman: The M.I.T. Gang

Goodbye, Chicago boys. Hello, M.I.T. gang.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the term “Chicago boys” was originally used to refer to Latin American economists, trained at the University of Chicago, who took radical free-market ideology back to their home countries. The influence of these economists was part of a broader phenomenon: The 1970s and 1980s were an era of ascendancy for laissez-faire economic ideas and the Chicago school, which promoted those ideas.

But that was a long time ago. Now a different school is in the ascendant, and deservedly so. [..]

The truth, although nobody will believe it, is that the economic analysis some of us learned at M.I.T. way back when has worked very, very well for the past seven years.

But has the intellectual success of M.I.T. economics led to comparable policy success? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Bruce Dixon: NetRoots Nation Confrontation Wasn’t About #BlackLivesMatter At All

The first thing to know about the #BlackLivesMatter confrontation with Democratic presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders is that it didn’t happen on the street or some neutral setting, it didn’t happen at some random campaign appearance. It happened at the annual NetRootsNation gathering, this year in Phoenix.

NetRoots bills itself as “the largest gathering of the progressive movement” in this country. Unless you think the Democratic party IS the progressive movement, or that all “progressives” are Democrats, this is nonsense. I know, I’ve been to NetRoots. [..]

Since Hillary is the all but inevitable Democratic nominee, confronting two minor white male candidates, demanding they “say her name” and come up with solutions that address white supremacy, structural racism and the runaway police state is pretty much a foolproof strategy to get noticed, and as Hillary did not attend NetRoots, they got to do it without antagonizing the Clinton camp. Hillary wisely covered her own ass by releasing a tweet that unequivocally said “black lives DO matter.”

But all in all, the NetRootsNation confrontation wasn’t the stirring of black women activists “taking their rightful place at the front of the progressive movement,” as one breathless tweet called it. It didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know about O’Malley or Sanders, or about hypocritical Hillary.

It was about flying the #BlackLivesMatter flag to jockey for positions inside the machinery that is the Democratic party and its affiliates.

Zoë Carpenter: Five Years After Dodd-Frank, ‘It’s Still a Financial System That Needs Reform’

At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, former North Carolina Congressman Brad Miller found himself searching for answers on Wikipedia. He was looking up “credit default swaps,” which the website defines as “a financial swap agreement that the seller…will compensate the buyer (usually the creditor of the reference loan) in the event of a loan default (by the debtor) or other credit event.” Largely unregulated, those swaps and other complex derivatives both amplified and obscured the risks of all the bad loans that mortgage companies had made and sold-and they bankrupted AIG. Miller was a member of the Financial Services Committee and a critic of the mortgage lending industry, but even he had no idea what they were.

“After I finished reading the Wikipedia entry on credit default swaps, I probably knew more about them than any other member of Congress,” Miller told me recently, on the fifth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law. Cleaning up the derivatives market was one of the main pillars of that landmark legislation. On that front, and in many other respects, the law’s legacy is still a work in progress, hampered by repeated attempts by Wall Street and its allies in Congress to undermine implementation, and by foot-dragging in some regulatory agencies.

John Glazer: Critics of the Iranian nuclear deal protest too much

Arguments against the agreement rely on specious assumptions and misinformation

The Barack Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran is historic. It significantly rolls back Iran’s enrichment program and staves off the risk of another calamitous U.S. war in the Middle East.

But the deal’s opponents – notably, all of the 2016 GOP candidates, most Republicans in Congress, hawkish Democrats such as Sen. Robert Menendez, and of course Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – remain doggedly against it.

As demonstrated in yesterday’s Senate hearing on the deal, Republicans and their allies continue to deny the deal’s strong non-proliferation features and reject the notion that it can actually yield real benefits to U.S. interests. The facts contradict their objections: Iran has to reduce its number of centrifuges by about two-thirds and dismantle about 97 percent of its low-enriched uranium stockpile while being subject to one of the most intrusive monitoring regimes in the world. The Additional Protocol, which allows for inspection of suspected but undeclared enrichment sites, is permanently adopted under this deal.

What’s more, few of the deal’s critics have offered any realistic alternatives.

E. J. Dionne: Donald Trump Has the GOP Establishment’s Number

The problems that bother us most are the ones we bring on ourselves. This is why Republicans are so out of sorts with Donald Trump. The party created the rough beast it is now trying to slay.

When Trump gave out Lindsey Graham’s cellphone number on Tuesday at an event in the South Carolina senator’s home state, he did it to show he wasn’t backing down after his outlandish attacks on Sen. John McCain’s status as a war hero. But he was also making clear to the Republicans assailing him that he really does have their number. [..]

NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Perry on “Meet the Press” last Sunday if Republicans are confronting a “reap-what-you-sow issue” with Trump. Perry’s reply was lame: “I’ll suggest to you we’re seeing the real Donald Trump now.”

Sorry, but the real Donald Trump has been in full view for a long time, and Perry’s new glasses can’t explain his newfound clarity. I don’t credit Trump with much. But he deserves an award for exposing the double-standards of Republican politicians. They put their outrage in a blind trust as long as Trump was, in Perry’s words, “throwing invectives in this hyperbolic rhetoric out there” against Obama and the GOP’s other enemies.

Only now are they willing to say: “You’re fired.” No wonder Trump is laughing.

Jul 24 2015

The Breakfast Club (A Sense of Purpose)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

A key ruling during the Watergate scandal; Nixon and Khrushchev hold a ‘kitchen debate’ during the Cold War; Brigham Young and Mormon followers arrive in present-day Utah; Apollo 11’s crew returns home.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

There is a longing among all people and creatures to have a sense of purpose and worth. To satisfy that common longing in all of us we must respect each other.

Chief Dan George

Jul 24 2015

On This Day In History July 24

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

June 24 is the 175th day of the year (176th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 190 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.

Roth v. United States, along with its companion case, Alberts v. California, was a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court which redefined the Constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment.

Prior history

Under the common law rule that prevailed before Roth, articulated most famously in the 1868 English case Hicklin v. Regina, any material that tended to “deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences” was deemed “obscene” and could be banned on that basis. Thus, works by Balzac, Flaubert, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence were banned based on isolated passages and the effect they might have on children.

Samuel Roth, who ran a literary business in New York City, was convicted under a federal statute criminalizing the sending of “obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy” materials through the mail for advertising and selling a publication called American Aphrodite (“A Quarterly for the Fancy-Free”) containing literary erotica and nude photography. David Alberts, who ran a mail-order business from Los Angeles, was convicted under a California statute for publishing pictures of “nude and scantily-clad women.” The Court granted a writ of certiorari and affirmed both convictions.

The case

Roth came down as a 6-3 decision, with the opinion of the Court authored by William J. Brennan, Jr.. The Court repudiated the Hicklin test and defined obscenity more strictly, as material whose “dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest” to the “average person, applying contemporary community standards.” Only material meeting this test could be banned as “obscene.” However, Brennan reaffirmed that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment and thus upheld the convictions of Roth and Alberts for publishing and sending obscene material over the mail.

Congress could ban material, “utterly without redeeming social importance,” or in other words, “whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest.”

With the Court unable to agree as to what constituted obscenity, the Justices were put in the position of having to personally review almost every obscenity prosecution in the United States, with the Justices gathering for weekly screenings of “obscene” motion pictures (Black and Douglas pointedly refused to participate, believing all the material protected). Meanwhile, pornography and sexually oriented publications proliferated as a result of the Warren Court’s holdings, the “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s flowered, and pressure increasingly came to the Court to allow leeway for state and local governments to crack down on obscenity. During his ill-fated bid to become Chief Justice, Justice Abe Fortas was attacked vigorously in Congress by conservatives such as Strom Thurmond for siding with the Warren Court majority in liberalizing protection for pornography. In his 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon campaigned against the Warren Court, pledging to appoint “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court.

The demise of Roth

In Miller v. California (1973), a five-person majority agreed for the first time since Roth as to a test for determining constitutionally unprotected obscenity, superseding the Roth test. By the time Miller was considered in 1973, Brennan had abandoned the Roth test and argued that all obscenity was constitutionally protected, unless distributed to minors or unwilling third-parties.

Jul 23 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: It ain’t over til it’s over: America’s wars drag on no matter what officials say

In all three of the countries where the Obama administration declared US wars “over” in the past few years – Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – the US military is expanding its presence or dropping bombs at an ever-increasing rate. And the government seems to be keeping the American public in the dark on the matter more than ever. [..]

What’s troubling about all of this is that it is happening with little debate in Congress and almost no input from public. The US is ramping up its war efforts across the Middle East and now North Africa. They want to increase drone strikes, continue to spend billions to train Afghanistan and Iraqi troops, despite the fact that the last decade of “training” has been a disaster where whole armies have deserted and billions of dollars in US weapons are now in the hands of Isis. And of course, the specter of adding more US ground troops always lurks in the background.

There is growing realization from experts that we’re not going to be able to bomb our way out of this. Is there no one in charge in Washington who is willing to admit that doubling down yet again on military force is only going to keep making matters worse?

Steven W. Thrasher: Cameras aren’t stopping police misconduct. Exhibit A: Sandra Bland

Until this summer, we haven’t much seen or heard police abusing black women’s bodies with the visual clarity of video. We have witnessed the worst of police abuse on video a lot with black men, from Rodney King back in 1991 to Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Walter Scott and Eric Harris just in the past year. But until last month, we have mostly only seen agents of the state abusing black women recreated in fiction, on shows like Orange is the New Black. [..]

Depressingly, though, bringing this long-standing treatment into stark visibility might not be enough outrage to end the terror.There was great hope by social scientists that police body cams could de-escalate officer encounters and mitigate the level of violence. But with their increasing use, alongside citizens taking videos of arrests, police killings have not slowed in this past year of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Nor, as some of the most recent videos suggest, are cops prone to act with much more humanity, whether they’re unwittingly on camera or knowingly so. I know the “well, if she’d just been more obedient!” crowd will justify Encinia’s abusive treatment of her, disregarding that the chain of events leading to her death could have been stopped by him.

And I am quite simply terrified that this latest pornographic video will visually reinforce the American misnomer that black women’s bodies are there for the taking – and that’s just the way things are.

Rep. Keith Ellison and Van Jones: Pollution isn’t colorblind: environmental hazards kill more black Americans

Thanks to people’s movements like Black Lives Matter and the Fight For 15, the call for racial and economic justice is getting louder and stronger. But while we are out on the streets fighting for equality, our kids are being poisoned by the air they breathe. Environmental injustices are taking black lives – that’s why our fight for equality has to include climate and environmental justice too.

African-Americans are more likely to live near environmental hazards like power plants and be exposed to hazardous air pollution, including higher levels of nitrogen oxides, ozone, particulate matter and carbon dioxide than their white counterparts. The presence of these pollutants increases rates of asthma, respiratory illness and cardiovascular disease. It puts newborn babies at risk. It causes missed days of work and school. We can’t afford this. Black kids already have the highest rate of asthma (pdf) in the nation, and our infant mortality rate is nearly double the national rate.

Dean Baker: Will the Fed ruin presidential candidates’ job plans?

If the Fed is committed to stopping job creation, there’s little a president can do

As we complete the fields for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations, most of the leading contenders are putting forward plans to create jobs. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and her leading rival, Bernie Sanders, are pushing plans for increased infrastructure investment. This would generate jobs in the short term directly by increasing demand. In the longer term, improved infrastructure should make the economy more productive, which would increase wages and make more people want to work. [..]

Whatever the merits of these various proposals, the argument that they would create more jobs depends on the assumption that the Federal Reserve Board will allow more jobs to be created. If that sounds strange, then you haven’t been paying attention to the Federal Reserve Board.

The Fed has an enormous impact on the economy, primarily through its control of interest rates. During the recession, the Fed was trying to boost growth and job creation by pushing down interest rates as low as possible. It pushed the federal funds rate, the short-term interest rate that is directly under its control, to zero and has held it there since early 2009.

As the economy continued to languish, the Fed tried to provide a further boost with its policy of quantitative easing. This meant buying up trillions of dollars in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities in order to put more direct downward pressure on mortgage rates, car loans and other long-term interest rates.

With the economy recovering, the Fed has backed away from its quantitative easing policy, ending bond purchases last year. It is now preparing to raise the short-term interest rate for the first time since before the recession. The explicit goal is to slow the economy and the rate of job creation out of a fear that the economy could overheat, meaning that too many people have jobs.

Robert Reich: Why Progressives Must Stay United

Poverty rates are nearly double among African-Americans and American Indians. Problems are most severe in South and Southwest. Particularly troubling is a large increase in the share of children living in poor communities marked by poor schools and a lack of a safe place to play.

Which brings me to politics, power, and the progressive movement.

The main event at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend was a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring one-on-one discussions between journalist and undocumented American Jose Antonio Vargas and presidential candidates Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders.

It was upstaged by ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter activists who demanded to be heard.

It’s impossible to overcome widening economic inequality in America without also dealing with the legacy of racial inequality.

And it is impossible to overcome racial inequality without also reversing widening economic inequality.

They are not the same but they are intimately related.

Poverty rates are nearly double among African-Americans and American Indians. Problems are most severe in South and Southwest. Particularly troubling is a large increase in the share of children living in poor communities marked by poor schools and a lack of a safe place to play.

Which brings me to politics, power, and the progressive movement.

The main event at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend was a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring one-on-one discussions between journalist and undocumented American Jose Antonio Vargas and presidential candidates Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders.

It was upstaged by ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter activists who demanded to be heard.

It’s impossible to overcome widening economic inequality in America without also dealing with the legacy of racial inequality.

And it is impossible to overcome racial inequality without also reversing widening economic inequality.

They are not the same but they are intimately related.

David Cay Johnston: The housing recovery favors high-end homes

The wealthy and big banks are winning, but the rest of America is struggling to buy homes, thanks to government policies

The housing market is slowly recovering, more than seven years after the economy collapsed into a pit of toxic mortgages. But look closely at the recovery and you can see another story: how government policy helps the affluent, not the desperate.

House prices are rising, home sales are increasing, and new building permits in May were up 30 percent from a year earlier, though that just restored them to 1994’s level. And while America has enjoyed a record 64 straight months of job growth, wages barely budged for most workers, making housing costs for many Americans a continuing struggle.

By contrast, the recovery has been much faster for the big banks, where many top executives remain in charge who got rich issuing mortgages that they knew were unlikely to ever be repaid.

Jul 23 2015

On This Day In History July 23

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

July 23 is the 204th day of the year (205th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 161 days remaining until the end of the year.

THE GREAT COMET OF 1997. Above, the bright head of comet Hale-Bopp, called the coma, is pointed towards the Sun. The coma is composed of dust and gas, masking the solid nucleus of the comet made up of rock, dust and ice. Photo taken by Jim Young at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories Table Mountain Observatory in March 1997.

The comet was discovered in 1995 by two independent observers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, both in the United States. Hale had spent many hundreds of hours searching for comets without success, and was tracking known comets from his driveway in New Mexico when he chanced upon Hale-Bopp just after midnight. The comet had an apparent magnitude of 10.5 and lay near the globular cluster M70 in the constellation of Sagittarius. Hale first established that there was no other deep-sky object  near M70, and then consulted a directory of known comets, finding that none were known to be in this area of the sky. Once he had established that the object was moving relative to the background stars, he emailed the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, the clearing house for astronomical discoveries.

Bopp did not own a telescope. He was out with friends near Stanfield, Arizona observing star clusters and galaxies when he chanced across the comet while at the eyepiece of his friend’s telescope. He realized he might have spotted something new when, like Hale, he checked his star maps to determine if any other deep-sky objects were known to be near M70, and found that there were none. He alerted the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams through a Western Union telegram. Brian Marsden, who has run the bureau since 1968, laughed, “Nobody sends telegrams anymore. I mean, by the time that telegram got here, Alan Hale had already e-mailed us three times with updated coordinates.”

The following morning, it was confirmed that this was a new comet, and it was named Comet Hale-Bopp, with the designation C/1995 O1. The discovery was announced in International Astronomical Union circular 6187.

Jul 22 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: John Kerry’s Next Challenge

Confronting the war party on Ukraine

The nuclear agreement with Iran provides ample proof of Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s remarkable commitment and skill in waging diplomacy. In an era when the Pentagon dominates our foreign policy and military options are too often trotted out as first responses, he has resuscitated the United States’ power to lead, pressure, and negotiate-a capacity too often denigrated as “soft power.”

No good deed goes unpunished. His reward for this is not only a pitched battle at home with hawks in both parties intent on torpedoing the Iran deal, but also what will be an even fiercer struggle with higher stakes: fending off those intent on escalating a face-off with Russia over Ukraine into a new Cold War. Once more, Kerry must preserve our real security interests from those recklessly brandishing America’s military prowess.

Michelle Goldberg: Why Planned Parenthood Shouldn’t Be on the Defensive

Fetal-tissue donation has helped produce treatments for Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis, and diseases that affect infants.

Well, we knew this was coming. Today, the Center for Medical Progress, the anti-abortion group waging a guerrilla media war against Planned Parenthood, released its second undercover video. Once again, activists posing as representatives of Biomax, a fictitious biomedical procurement company, met with a senior Planned Parenthood official-in this case, Dr. Mary Gatter, medical director of the Pasadena affiliate and president of Planned Parenthood’s Medical Directors Council. Once again, the recording does not support the Center for Medical Progress’s central claim, which is that Planned Parenthood “sells” fetal body parts. Even in the heavily edited version of the recording that the Center for Medical Progress initially put out, Gatter repeatedly makes it clear that she’s not interested in profiting. “[W]e’re not in it for the money, and we don’t want to be in a position of being accused of selling tissue, and stuff like that,” she says. “On the other hand, there are costs associated with the use of our space, and that kind of stuff.” [..]

What’s needed is a forthright defense of fetal-tissue donation, which has been used to develop vaccines, to search for treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cystic fibrosis, and, crucially, to protect infants. “Fetal tissue is often used in research on diseases and disorders that affect babies,” Danielle Paqette writes in The Washington Post. “Scientists use it to better understand fetal anatomy and how it may react to certain treatments. Liver is particularly helpful when assessing whether a medicine may be toxic.” Refusing to use fetal remains for research would do nothing to curb abortion. It would only make sure that nothing positive could come from abortions that will happen regardless.

More people should be out there saying that-not just Planned Parenthood, but researchers, patient advocates, and neonatologists. We should be having the same debate we had about stem cells. The anti-abortion movement can’t expose something that isn’t kept in the dark.

Amanda Marcotte: How The Reddit Debacle Proves Libertarians Wrong

While most of the major players are making their lawyers happy by being purposefully vague in public, Ellen Pao’s resignation as CEO of Reddit has reignited the debate over how to handle the squirming underbelly of the internet. This underbelly consists mainly, but not exclusively, of angry white dudes who want to spew as much hate as possible at women, people of color, and LGBT people. While most of them hide behind the auspices of “free speech,” it’s increasingly clear that these trolls are motivated mainly by a deep desire to silence: to use harassment as a tool to run off anyone who values meaningful discourse or wants an environment that is inclusive to all sorts of people. This silencing campaign has harmed Pao and, as she fears, the “trolls are winning.”

While the new CEO of Reddit has promised to keep with Pao’s program to clean up Reddit and make it safe for non-toxic people to use, it immediately became clear that the white male-heavy leadership of Reddit has zero intention of actually doing anything about it. [..]

Businesses aren’t run by a bunch of computers making rational decisions based strictly on the bottom line or else this debate would have been settled, with the bigots and the haters banished from Reddit years ago. Instead, businesses are run by flawed, blinkered human beings who do foolish things like reflexively defend the “free speech” rights of a bunch of childish bigots over the free speech needs of a more diverse group of people.

Nor is the “free market” a solution that will weed out those making such poor decisions. On the contrary, as this debacle has shown, the “free market”-run by a bunch of white guys who don’t understand the toll of internet harassment on women and people of color-ran off a CEO who was taking steps to preserve Reddit’s business future by making it a more welcoming place to a variety of people. The only thing libertarianism is good at, it appears, is running protection for the bigots of the world, but it doesn’t do anything to improve freedom-or markets-for the rest of us.

Bryce Covert: Is There Room for Women Workers Under Capitalism?

A 1971 Nation article says no. The author is both very wrong, and very right.

Women and their role in the workplace are set to be a constant drumbeat in this presidential campaign. In Hillary Clinton’s first major policy speech on the economy, she called for the need to “break…down barriers so more Americans participate more fully in the workforce, especially women.” Leaving “talent on the sidelines,” and in particular female talent, she argued, is a drag on the economy. This represents, in Clinton’s parlance, “unused potential” in our capitalist society.

But feminists and capitalism sometimes have an uneasy relationship. In 1971, Betty MacMorran Gray wrote in the pages of this magazine that capitalism makes an odd bedfellow for those seeking women’s liberation. Under capitalism, she says, women will regularly get kicked out of the workforce as unnecessary, constituting an always-contingent pool of labor. “Capitalism, which rarely requires full employment, cannot use increasing numbers of women workers,” she wrote.

Laura Carasik: The World Bank has an accountability problem

Bank fails to protect critics but safeguards its impunity

In April members of impoverished fishing and farming communities near the Tata Mundra coal-fired power plant in Gujarat, India, filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., against the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, the International Financial Corp. (IFC), which funded the project, seeking remedies for harms to their environment, livelihood and health. The IFC is asking the district court to dismiss the suit, claiming absolute immunity for harms caused by the project, which would leave the plaintiffs without an effective avenue of redress. [..]

The World Bank’s resistance to accountability undercuts its anti-poverty mission. Its latest insistence on insulating itself from liability follows recent damning revelations about the organization’s failure to protect critics. On June 29 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a leaked World Bank internal survey, which detailed a climate of intimidation at the bank, where nearly 60 percent of staffers said they could not report unethical behavior for fear of repercussions.

On June 22 Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a scathing report that denounced the bank for failing to ensure that critics of bank-funded projects can operate safely. HRW cited numerous examples of repression against human rights defenders, journalists and nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia, India, Uganda, Uzbekistan and other countries.

Michelle Chen: How Can Greece Break Out of the Austerity Trap?

Whether it leaves or stays under the yoke of the German-led technocracy, Athens will need to find an alternative path to recovery.

Greek banks have reopened this week, but Greece’s economy remains trapped in a tragic financial standoff-ironically, an economic war orchestrated by the monetary system originally designed to promote peaceful cooperation. So as the protests, financial panic, and political brinksmanship run their course, can anyone envision Greece actually rebuilding from this mess? Whether it leaves or stays under the yoke of the German-led technocracy, Athens will need to find an alternative path to recovery.

With Syriza’s current government in turmoil, there’s no clear Plan B. But one report by the progressive think tank Just Jobs Network (JJN), based in Washington and New Delhi, laid out some practical hypotheticals on what might happen in the event of stage-left Grexit or continued eurozone membership.

[..]

If they exit now from this financial “theater of the absurd,” maybe the Greeks will get the last laugh-cutting the troika loose, keeping their dignity intact, and watching the rest of the continent sink under the tragic weight of its delusions of grandeur.

 

Jul 22 2015

The Breakfast Club (Limits)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Wiley Post completes first solo flight around the world; Robber John Dillinger shot dead; Saddam Hussein’s sons killed in Iraq; The September 11th Commission releases its report; Birth of the Frisbee.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Jul 22 2015

On This Day In History July 22

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

July 22 is the 203rd day of the year (204th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 162 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1933, Wiley Post becomes the first person to fly solo around the world traveling 15,596 miles in 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

Like many pilots at the time, Post disliked the fact that the speed record for flying around the world was not held by a fixed-wing aircraft, but by the Graf Zeppelin, piloted by Hugo Eckener in 1929 with a time of 21 days. On June 23, 1931, Post and his navigator, Harold Gatty, left Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York in the Winnie Mae with a flight plan that would take them around the world, stopping at Harbour Grace, Flintshire, Hanover twice, Berlin, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk, Nome where his airscrew had to be repaired, Fairbanks where the airscrew was replaced, Edmonton, and Cleveland before returning to Roosevelt Field. They arrived back on July 1, after traveling 15,474 miles in the record time of 8 days and 15 hours and 51 minutes. The reception they received rivaled Lindbergh’s everywhere they went. They had lunch at the White House on July 6, rode in a ticker-tape parade the next day in New York City, and were honored at a banquet given by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America at the Hotel Astor. After the flight, Post acquired the Winnie Mae from F.C. Hall, and he and Gatty published an account of their journey titled, Around the World in Eight Days, with an introduction by Will Rogers.

His Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae is on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and his pressure suit is being prepared for display at the same location. On August 15, 1935, Post and American  humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post’s aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow, in Alaska.

Jul 21 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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New York Times Editorial Board: A Senate Bill That Makes Roads and Railroads Less Safe

Last month the House passed an appropriations bill that would put bigger trucks with overworked drivers behind the wheel on the nation’s highways. If that weren’t irresponsible enough, the Senate is now considering legislation that would allow trucking companies to hire 18-year-old drivers for interstate routes and undermine safety on roads and railroads in numerous other ways.

Even by the low standards of the current Congress, these bills are egregious examples of faithfully saying yes to everything industry wants, in this case the transportation companies. The Senate is expected to take up its disingenuously named Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection Act of 2015 this week as part of a larger transportation package that reauthorizes federal agencies and programs.

Dean Baker: Wolfgang Schauble, the Hero of the Greek Austerity Crisis?

Like many people following the negotiations between Greece and its creditors, I was inclined to see Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, as the villain of the story. After all, Mr. Schauble insisted on severely punitive measures for Greece as a condition for continuing support from the European Central Bank (ECB). He appeared to be the bad cop relative to others in the negotiations, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was willing to make at least some concessions to keep Greece in the euro. But a more careful analysis arguably leads to the opposite conclusion.

Schauble did not argue for throwing Greece out of the euro simply as a punitive measure, although he quite obviously disapproved of the way Greece had run its budget and its economy. He argued, quite possibly sincerely, that at least a temporary departure from the euro zone would be the best path forward for Greece. [..]

The Greek government had not prepared itself for the process of leaving the euro. Perhaps the world will be surprised and the deal it reached with its creditors will provide a basis for renewed growth. But if not, it may want to get back in touch with Mr. Schauble.

Wendell Potter: Revolving Door Puts Former Medicare Czar In Charge Of Health Insurance Lobby

Washington’s notorious revolving door was in full swing again last week as the health insurance industry snagged another top federal official to help it get what it wants out of lawmakers and regulators. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s biggest lobbying and PR group, announced Wednesday that its new president, starting next month, will be none other than Marilyn Tavenner, who served as the chief administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services from 2013 until she stepped down in February.

Tavenner’s appointment comes just a few months after the industry recruitedformer Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, a Pennsylvania Democrat, to head its newest front group, the Better Medicare Alliance.

These two hires tell us all we need to know about where insurance companies see their pot of gold in the not-too-distant future. Some insurers, in fact, have already discovered that taxpayer-supplied pot of gold and want to make doubly sure that nobody in Washington dares take it away.

Nathan J. Robinson: A frightening proposal to intern Muslim citizens

In the wake of the Chattanooga shooting, a dangerous suggestion appears from right and left

Terrorist violence can make the previously unthinkable suddenly seem acceptable. The levels of surveillance introduced after 9/11 could have been considered reasonable only in the climate of collective panic that the attacks induced. But this week’s reaction to the fatal shooting of four Marines and a Navy petty officer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a 24-year-old Muslim has to win the prize for the worst proposed civil liberties infringement to come out of a violent disruption. No matter how high tensions may have run after the Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11, few dared to propose what figures of both left and right have now suggested: the segregation and internment of Muslim citizens. [..]

One might point out, in the first place, that the idea of detaining people for “the duration of the conflict” means, in practice, imprisoning them forever. Since the “war on terrorism” is a fight without end, it will never have some ticker-tape-strewn V-Day, and Clark’s suggestion is for the government to deem particular Muslims too radical to live freely and isolate them permanently in camps.

But more generally, one might inform him that the United States’ heinous civil liberties abuses during World War II are often considered a particularly dark patch in the nation’s history. The rounding up of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans – and their placement in squalid camps – was a racist disgrace that the country apologized for in 1988 and left traumatic scars that last to this day. The lesson supposedly learned was that the humiliation and segregation of an entire ethnic group is an indefensible assault on principles of dignity and equality. Clark, however, appears to have taken this cautionary tale as a useful suggestion.

Lawrence Lessig: The Only Realistic Way to Fix Campaign Finance

FOR the first time in modern history, the leading issue concerning voters in the upcoming presidential election, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, is that “wealthy individuals and corporations will have too much influence over who wins.” Five years after the Supreme Court gave corporations and unions the right to spend unlimited amounts in political campaigns, voters have had enough.

Republican candidates, including Chris Christie, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, and the main Democratic candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders, all acknowledge the problem, with some tying it to the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, which unleashed virtually unlimited “independent” political spending.

The solution proposed by some, notably Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Graham and Mr. Sanders, is amending the Constitution.

It sounds appealing, but anyone who’s serious about reform should not buy it. For a presidential candidate, constitutional reform is fake reform. And no candidate who talks exclusively about amending the Constitution can be considered a credible reformer.

Scott Ritter: On Military Service and Politics

The chattering class is abuzz over erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent attack of Arizona Senator (and fellow Republican) John McCain’s record of military service. In front of an enthusiastic audience, Trump snidely remarked that he “liked people who weren’t captured,” noting that Senator McCain was a “war hero because he was captured.”

Many pundits have declared that Trump’s attack on Senator McCain has dealt a fatal blow to his bid for the presidency, but such analysis is disingenuous — Donald Trump has never been a serious candidate for president. His presence among the ranks of Republican presidential hopefuls is more a reflection of a certain segment of America’s infatuation with the baser aspects of reality television than any viability as a contender for office. Donald Trump is the Kim Kardashian/Kaitlyn Jenner of American politics — all self-promotion, no substance and, among serious company, downright embarrassing.

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